CHAPTER XXII
A NEWCOMER
One morning, brilliant, with the deceptive brilliancy of Kerguelen, abig man, rough and red-bearded and carrying a bundle slung over hisshoulder, stood on the rocks that formed the eastern point of the greatbeach; the sun was at his back and before him lay the seven mile stretchof sand and rock leading to the far-off Lizard Point.
He was over six feet in height but so strongly built that he scarcelylooked his inches. He was a sailor. The gulls might have told that bythe way he stood, and his eyes, accustomed to roving over vast spaces,swept the beach before him from end to end, took in the sea elephantsmoving like slugs and the seal-nursery and the river and the sandsbeyond and the Lizard Point crawling out to sea beyond the sands.
Then he cast his eyes inland.
He wanted to get to the west and he had to choose between seven miles ofbroken country or seven miles of easy beach.
The sea elephants were a bar across the beach. He could gauge their sizefrom where he stood, they looked formidable, but they were less so thanthe rocks strewing that broken country. He had climbed over rocks andgone round rocks and nearly fallen from rocks till rocks had become inhis mind enemies bitter, brutal, callous, and far more formidable thanlive things. He chose the beach and came down to it, taking his wayalong the sea edge as a person takes his way along a pavement edge,giving possibly turbulent people the wall.
As he closed up towards the seal beach he kept his eyes fixed on thegreat bulls and their families, and the bulls, as he drew closer,shifted their position to watch him, beyond that they shewed no sign.Then as he began to pass them he recognised that he had nothing to fear,the females alone, here and there, shewed any sign of disturbance,shuffling towards him with wicked eyes, rising on their flippers, butalways sinking down and shuffling back as he went on.
Further along, though followed and met by a hundred pairs of eyes, eventhe females began to treat him with indifference. It was as though thewhole herd were under the dominion of one brain that recognized him asharmless and passed him along. He would pause now and then to look atthem with the admiration of strength for strength. He was of their type,a bull man, rough from the sea as themselves.
Then he saw the caves and would have passed them only for something thatcaught his eye. A red labelled Libby tin was lying on the dark sandclose to the mouth of one of the caves, and if you wish to know how anold tomato tin or an old beef tin can shout, you must go alone to thegreat beach of Kerguelen and find one there--which you will not.
The sight of the tin made him start and catch in his breath. The tin waseverything he knew of ships and men focussed in a point, a knight inarmour riding along the beach would have astonished him no more, wouldhave heated his blood far less.
He struck up towards it, took it in his hand, examined it inside and outand then cast his eye at the cave before which it had lain. He sawsomething in the cave, it was a woman; a woman lying on the sand with arolled-up blanket under her head. She was lying on her back and he saw athin white hand, so small, so thin, so strange that he drew slightlyback, glanced over his shoulder, as if to make sure that everything wasall right with the world, and then glanced again, drawing closer.
Then he called out and the woman moved. He could see her face now,white, and thin and drawn, and great eyes, terrible eyes, fixed on him.
Away out at sea, terribly near the coast of Death she saw him, a livingbeing, as the castaway sees a ship on the far horizon.
He saw her hold out her arms to him and then, throwing his bundle aside,he was down on his knees beside her, holding the hands that sought hisand with those terrible eyes holding him too.
He saw her lips moving, saw that they were dry and parched. Then heknew. She wanted water.
An empty baling tin was lying near her. The sight of the river close bywas in his mind, he released the hands, picked up the tin and scrambledout of the cave. As he ran to the river heedless of sea elephants oranything else he kept crying out: "Oh, the poor woman. Oh, the poorwoman." He seemed like a huge thing demented. The baby sea elephantsscuttered out of his way and as he came running back he spilt half thecontents of the tin. Then he was down beside her again, dipping hisfinger in the water and moistening her lips.
She sucked his finger as a baby sucks and the feel of that made himcurse with the tears running down into his beard. The size of the balingtin seemed horrible beyond words; he couldn't get it to her lips. Stillhe went on, not knowing that it was his finger that was giving her backlife; the blessed touch of a human being that had come almost too late.
He was sitting on his heels, and now, casting his great head from sideto side, he saw things stacked behind her, tins and a bag and metalthings that shone dimly. Putting out his hand he caught a corner of thebag. It was a bread bag, sure enough, and as he pulled it towards himthe other things came clattering down almost hitting her, and amongstthem, God-sent, a little tin spoon.
He seized it and filled it and brought the tip to her lips and sheswallowed the water making movements with her throat muscles as thoughit were half a cupful. He did this a dozen times and then rested, spoonin hand, watching her. She made a couple of slight movements with herhead as if nodding to him and her eyes never left him for a moment, theyseemed holding on to life through him. He offered a spoonful of wateragain, she moved her head slightly as though she had had enough, but hereyes never left him.
He knew. If the whole thing had been carefully explained to him he couldnot have known better how she was clinging to him, as a child to amother, as a creature to life. And all the time his rough mind in atumble of confusion and trouble was trying to think how she came likethis, with a bread bag close to her and a river within reach.
A tin cup had come down with the other things, it gave him an idea, andgetting a biscuit out of the bag he broke it up, put the pieces in thecup with some water and let them soak. It took a long time and all thewhile, now and then, he kept talking to her.
"There. Y'aren't so bad after all--keep up till I get you somethingmore. There's no use in troubling--you'll be on your pins soon."
He would pause to swear at the biscuit for not softening quicker,helping it to crumble with his mighty thumb thrust in the cup. To "getfood into her" was his main idea, it didn't matter about thumbs. He wasnot without experience of starvation and thirst and what they can do topeople, and, as he worked away talking to her, pictures from the pastcame to him of people he had seen like this, nearly "done in" by thesea.
Then he began to feed her with the noxious pap. He managed to get sixspoonfuls "into her" and then he saw she would stand no more; still,that was something, and as he brooded on his heels watching her he sawthat she was making a struggle to keep it down, and he knew that if shebrought it up she was done for. And all the time she kept holding himwith her eyes as though he were helping her in the struggle.
He was. The sight of him gave her just the strength necessary to tideover the danger point; then she lay still and the food, such as it was,began to do its work.
One may say that the stomach thinks; every mood of the mind can touch itand it can influence every mood of the mind.
Then the terrible fixed eyes began to grow more human, then to closeslightly. She was still far at sea, but no longer adrift; like a littleboat taken in tow she was heading now back for the shore. She fellasleep holding his thumb.
The bits of wood she had chipped from the figure-head were lying in alittle heap near the cave mouth and the axe lay beside them. He notedthem as he sat motionless as a carved figure till the grip on his thumbrelaxed, and the dry claw-like hand, now growing moist and human, gaveup its hold.
Then, crawling out, stealthily and side-ways like a crab, he seized theaxe and, rising up outside, axe in hand, stood looking in at the woman.He stood watching her, making sure that she was well asleep, then heturned towards the seal nursery swinging the axe. There he murdered alittle girl sea elephant after a short, sharp chase over the rocks.Then, close to the caves and with his sai
lor's knife, he stripped her offur and blubber. He placed the blubber on one side, cut up the meat andretaining the heart and kidneys wrapped the head and the remainders inthe pelt and dumped them in a crack in the rocks.
Having done this he went to the river and washed his hands free of theblood and grease.
In his bundle there was a box with half a dozen matches, they would havebeen gone long ago only that long ago his tobacco had given out. Theywere useful now.
He knelt down and undid the bundle. There was in it beside the match-boxa shirt rolled up, two sailors' knives, two tobacco boxes, a couple ofhuge biscuits, a piece of sail cloth and a pair of men's boots, onemight have fancied from the knives and tobacco boxes that he was theonly survivor of a party of three cast on the coast and that he had keptthese things as relics. That was the fact.
When he had secured the matches his next thought was of the firewood andthe baling tin. There was a saucepan away at the back of the cave underthe other things but he could not see it. He could see the tin but hedreaded going in to get it lest he should wake the woman and she shouldclutch his thumb again.
That was a bad experience and he told himself that if she had notrelaxed her hold he would have been sitting there still tied hand andfoot and not daring to move--strength in the clutch of weakness, to whomGod has given a power greater that that of strength.
He crawled in and secured the tin without wakening her and as muchfirewood as he wanted. It was fairly dry and with the help of theblubber he soon had it burning between two big stones, then he put thetin on, half filled with water, and dropped in the seal meat cut fine.He was making soup for himself as well as for her. He had been withouthot food for ages and the smell of the stuff as it began to cook madehim sometimes forget her entirely.
Predatory gulls had found the pelt and the head in the rock crevice andtheir quarrelling filled the beach. He turned his head sometimes to lookat them as he sat squatting like a gipsy before the little fire, tiltingthe tin by the handle and stirring the contents with his knife. He was aman of resource for, before filling the tin with fresh water, he haddipped it in the sea so as to get some salt into the mess.
Then when the stuff was cooked, having no spoon, he had to wait until itcooled a bit before tasting it. He went to the cave mouth to have alook at the woman. The quarrelling of the great gulls had evidentlyawakened her, for her eyes were open, and as his figure cut the light atthe cave entrance her head moved. He ran back for the precious tin and,carrying it carefully, and half carried away by the entrancing smell ofit, knelt down beside her, then picking up the spoon began to feed herbefore feeding himself.